LOOKBACK: Monkeys once drew crowds along Austin Mill Pond
State park included various creatures near swimming beach in 1930s as part of zoo
By Tim Ruzek, Cedar River Watershed District
Frances Ulmer walked into her garage in 1935 to start a summer afternoon trip to Rose Creek.
Upon entering the garage, however, she saw tracks on the car’s hood and started wiping them off when she saw the head and shoulders of a highly unusual intruder on the other side.
Ulmer was face to face with a rhesus macasus monkey, originally from India, that escaped three days earlier about 10 blocks away from its cage along the Cedar River at Austin Mill Pond.
“It grinned across the car at her. She gave a second look to make sure that she was really seeing a monkey, and then she fled from the building, slamming the door behind her,” wrote the Austin Daily Herald on June 15, 1935.
This story made national news as firefighters, police officers, local kids and adults had been searching for the monkey for three days, including a man looking up at tree tops while carrying a net and gas bomb.
Escapes aside, the group of macasus rhesus monkeys’ residence in Austin from 1934 to 1941 made quite the buzz in the Austin community and beyond as an entertaining feature of what was Horace Austin State Park along the Cedar River.
The famous monkey cage still gets mentioned in the community today.
All the monkey business began in 1933 when the Herald announced that “Austin is going to have a zoo.” Although, at the time, it wasn’t known if the monkeys would be rented for the summer or purchased as permanent Austin residents.
Work led by local businessman Charles Fox, who also was the state park’s local leader, began at the park to create a monkey house with two cages. It was 16 feet long, 10 feet wide and 8 feet high, with a foundation placed above the high-water mark to protect the animals from flooding.
Porous, colored rocks from Lanesboro, Minn., were used along with cement and steel.
“The colored rocks will make it distinctly ornamental and will add to the beauty of the park,” the Herald wrote Aug. 23, 1933.
A newspaper report that fall included the monkey house in its overview of Austin’s 1933 building program that boasted 37 new homes and extensive additions to the Hormel Foods plant across the river from the state park.
This monkey house proved to be an attraction not only for its inhabitants but also its look.
“That the rustic architecture of the monkey house in the state park makes a desirable and perhaps appropriate background for outdoor portraits was noted yesterday when many a shot was taken as friends grouped in front of the building,” the Herald wrote April 9, 1934.
Monkey business begins
A load of five monkeys arrived in June 1934, including an unusually larger monkey known as the “Big Moose.” Two were under age 1; the other three were between 1 and 2 years old.
Fox joked in the newspaper that there was no political significance in having the monkeys arrive at the state park on the same day as primary elections.
“The primary is over. The monkeys in the state park are now getting the most attention,” the Herald wrote.
In the next day’s Herald, officials already were making pleas for citizens to not annoy the monkeys.
“Antics of the people who watch the monkeys have given a new problem for the Austin policeman,” the Herald wrote June 21, 1934.
An officer went to the park the previous night to quiet spectators doing “their utmost to annoy the monkeys.” Police reminded public that the monkeys cost a lot of money and “should not be poked at with sticks, teased or fed all sorts of stuff.”
The next day, the newspaper wrote about adults — not children — proving to be the most annoying to the monkeys. Separation might be needed from people, the Herald wrote, such as covering the cage for periods to give the animals a rest.
“The spectators seem to expect the monkeys to perform all day long and some have resorted to the use of sticks and other methods to keep the animals in motion,” the Herald wrote.
Children seem to have a better understanding on the proper treatment of animals “for it seems that adults have ben the greatest offenders in tormenting the monkeys here.”
In June 1938, a boy wearing glasses approached the monkey house and rattled the cages with his glasses in front of a monkey.
“Quick as a flash, the monk’s little hand went out and grabbed the glasses. The monk took a look through the glasses and set up a chatter,” the Herald wrote.
Older monkeys grabbed the glasses and looked through them as well until a park worker got the glasses back.
Three months later, a “full-sized man” was reported that morning to have been amusing himself for about two hours by poking at the caged monkeys with a stick.
“Had kids done that, they would probably have had their ears boxed,” the Herald wrote.
Caring for the monkeys
By 1935, the park’s monkey family had increased to seven members, including a baby born in April 1935 at the city’s sewage plant, which was their winter home.
“Baby Monkey Waiting for Chance to Delight Kiddies at State Park,” read a Herald headline April 30, 1935. Park officials planned to add the baby monkey and its mother to the state park in mid-May.
“(The baby) has a puckered-up little nose, blinking little eyes and it no doubt asks its mother why the monkeys outside the cage are such funny looking folks,” the Herald wrote.
Two years later, another baby monkey was born, with the Herald running a naming contest. This led to 747 names coming in for a $5 award, with “Lulabelle” being the winner.
Sadly, a month later, baby Lulabelle was killed in an accident with its mother inside the disposal plant’s cage. The baby got its head stuck between the cage’s bars and the mother killed it while trying to pull it out.
Two weeks later, another baby monkey was born at the disposal plant. The mourning mother grabbed the baby and climbed to the top of the cage, where it held it affectionately. This led the other mother to attack, starting a fight between the two. The mourning mother then was placed in a another cage.
Before coming to Austin, the monkeys did not appear to have received the best care. They arrived thin and hungry, and they ate almost constantly once in Austin.
Separating the monkeys from each other also proved necessary. Two of the older monkeys started picking on two of the younger ones, leading to teeth-related scars on them.
“They have not yet learned how to play together and it may become necessary to place a partition in the cage to separate the two young monkeys from the others,” the Herald wrote.
By spring 1935, Fox reported that the monkeys were in “fine, healthy condition. They are fat and happy, friendly and healthy.”
These monkeys were fed twice a day with raw corn or wheat, whole wheat bread, bananas, peanuts and popcorn. Fred Mann, the state park’s custodian, took care of them.
“No monks ever got better care than this bunch,” Fox said April 16, 1935.
But that wasn’t always the sentiment in news reports.
In 1938, the Herald wrote that the monkeys were feeling the chill in late September at the state park with no heater and no blankets.
Also that month, a 19-year-old man from Illinois was fined $10 in court for getting inside the monkey cage’s guard rail, kicking the cage and making the monkeys “excited and infuriated.”
The opposite happened in June 1935 when a monkey got out of its cage and caused excitement.
“If you see a monkey running about the town, don’t think that you are suffering from a sunstroke,” the Herald wrote June 12, 1935.
That morning, a zookeeper went to feed a baby bear in the same cage but a monkey slid out the door headed west, visiting several homes’ yards before climbing “to the top of the highest tree to scan the landscape.”
That monkey, which was the one found in the Ulmer garage days later, escaped again later that fall by playing a similar trick on park staff. The monkeys were being placed in boxes for their winter relocation to the city sewage plant.
“This sly monk stayed upon a branch watching the operation of catching the others,” the Herald wrote. “The keeper was trying to coax one down when the sly one dropped down behind the keeper and shot out the door.”
The monkey stayed out all night in a tree near its cage. The next day, staff tried tricking the monkey into a box trap with a long string and banana.
“Monk came down the tree, and also saw the string. It picked up the string, bit it in half, took the banana and went up the tree, where it grinned as it ate the banana, throwing the skin at the box.”
That night, the monkey was contained again after it went into the open cage to get more bananas.
One bear of a summer
When the monkeys started their Austin residence in 1934 in Austin, officials also planned to accept buffalo from the U.S. government. Due to limited feed in the area, though, those plans were canceled in August 1934 but locals still looked forward to buffalo coming in spring 1935.
“Besides we have a lot of monkeys, and they are show enough for one season,” the Herald wrote.
Buffalo, however, don’t appear to have ever come to the park but, instead, a black bear cub was brought in for the 1935 season.
Pluto, a 5-week-old black bear cub, came to Austin in June 1935 after Fox had a Native American guide capture it near his fishing camp in Ontario, Canada. Earlier that spring, the Herald reported Fox’s plans to bring back two baby bears to make local kids think of their Teddy Bears.
With now seven monkeys in the Austin group still in their winter quarters at the city disposal plant, the bear was placed in their cage at the state park as a temporary home.
“Pluto did not choose the cage as his permanent residence,” the Herald wrote June 4, 1935. “But on the other hand, like most well-fed and well-dispositioned bear cubs, he offered no objection to being left alone in a place where the supply of peanuts, tossed through the wire gratings seems practically continuous.”
Concern with how the bear would get along with the monkeys was heightened when Pluto swatted away a puppy that got too close.
“All last summer, the hundreds of youngsters who visited the monkeys testified to the success of that exhibit. But in the few hours which he has been in town, Pluto showed promise of being an equally great attraction,” the Herald wrote.
In August 1935, George LaBar, a well-known naturalist and raiser of various wild animals at his park in Lansing Township, gifted the city a racoon, skunk, badger and fitch for the state park. He also offered foxes, owls and other meat-eating creatures but the city only wanted animals that also would eat vegetables.
These animals were placed in the park’s western side, with plans for an octagonal cage to be built of bars and concrete for them. In the meantime, they lived in cages from LaBar’s park.
At the time, the state park’s zoo featured monkeys, a bear and birds.
The Herald soon started writing with concern about Pluto, saying the “poor little bear in the state park has a hard life at best. It is far from its home in the wild wood.”
Pluto had a sliding chain to keep him in captivity but did not seem to enjoy human spectators as he often curled up and hid his eyes. The previous day, a man stood near Pluto and kicked him in the nose, leading the bear to bite his shoe.
As for Pluto, it’s not clear what arrangements were made for him during the day with the monkeys but, in the evening, Fox’s brother, Irvin, who managed the downtown Fox Hotel, took the bear home just up the hill from the state park. Irvin fed and played with the bear before putting it in his basement for the night.
One evening, the bear found a door open to the upstairs and got into a bedroom, where he was found sleeping under a bed after knocking over a clock that sent out alarm rings.
By October 1935, Charley Fox was in a tough position. Pluto arrived as a cub but had grown into “quite a bear.”
“It was easy to find the milk to feed him from a bottle but when he wants pork chops and T-bone steaks on the side, he becomes a burden,” the Herald wrote Oct. 1, 1935. “He has been cute, a delight of the children but now he is becoming a burden.”
Fox apparently was hoping to find a good home for Pluto that winter with hopes that the bear would not return to the Austin park in spring.
By the next day, the Herald reported that staff from St. Paul’s Como Zoo were coming to take Pluto, who was described as a “black ball of mischief.”
“He was as fat as a tub of butter, and as roly-poly as an egg,” the Herald wrote. “His coat of black fur was untarnished and unmarred by mange, and such diseases as the furry animals are apt to contact in captivity.”
Just the previous day, Pluto got loose from the park and went to Irvin Fox’s home, where he pushed open a back door and ate a crate of peaches inside.
In 1936, despite no longer having Pluto, the Austin zoo still offered a “menagerie” of animals, including monkeys, badgers, ferrets, skunks and racoon.
Monkey trouble
When one of the monkeys escaped for several days in June 1935, firefighters and police launched an intensive effort to capture it, especially given that the day before it escaped, an 11-year-old girl visiting from North Dakota was bitten by a monkey at the park cage.
Her injuries were treated by a doctor but not serious. The doctor, however, described a monkey bit as ranking third “in its possibility of danger among all animal bites,” the Herald wrote June 15, 1935.
The following summer, another child needed medical help after a monkey bit his finger after the boy put the finger through the cage’s wire. The boy’s injuries weren’t serious but were treated to prevent infection.
“Children were warned today to stay away from the cage and not go closer than the fence that encompasses about the monkey house,” the Herald wrote Aug. 8, 1936.
In August 1939, a 10-year-old girl from Chicago put her fingers through cage’s wire mesh and suffered a severe bite on the tip of a finger.
That summer, there were concerns raised about vehicles nearly hitting children in the state park. Gathered at the monkey cage, the kids, “after watching the antics of these animals, suddenly swing around and run for the beach (along the Cedar River) without looking to the left or right.”
At the time, indications were that the monkey cage would be relocated to reduce that danger but that doesn’t seem to have happened.
End of the monkeys and state park
State leaders in 1937 reclassified Horace Austin State Park as a “scenic wayside.” The following spring, the state pushed to return the park land to the City of Austin. This involved the state firing Fox, the state park’s local leader for 16 years, and Mann, the long-time park custodian.
Fox, who never even was paid for his work at the state park, was discharged for the “harboring of wild beasts” in the state park, including “monkeys, bears, pheasants, racoons, foxes, owls.” He also allowed the growing of lilacs, peonies, iris, zinnias and daisies in the park contrary to the law that called for state parks being “wild places, with only wild flowers in the blooming line.”
Austin community members supported Fox, though. He was known as “one of our most public-spirited men, one who loves children and gives freely for all things that make for their happiness,
the Herald wrote Oct. 9, 1937. He also spent hundreds of his own money for the state park’s zoo.
As for Fox’s monkeys, the city opted in April 1941 to give four monkeys to Garnet Kough, an Austin circus impresario, because they were too much for the city to care for. Kough already had two lions and two trained bears for his circus.
By October 1943, Kough was defending his care of the monkeys in Mower County court. He was charged with not providing adequate housing for the monkeys at his shop in Lansing. The monkeys allegedly were kept for two weeks in a shipping crate, with odors leading to complaints from Lansing residents.
After Kough confirmed he had moved the monkeys into a appropriately sized cages on his farm near Lansing, the criminal charges were dropped.
Two months later, Kough gave the four monkeys to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, “where they were welcomed with open arms,” the Herald wrote Dec. 16, 1943.
“The Mayo Clinic monkey supply has been reduced by the war, and Austin’s four will contribute probably more than their mite toward research,” the Herald wrote, adding that “thousands of children and many adults found entertainment in watching them” at the state park.
Under the care of Dr. E.C. Rosenow, a Mayo Foundation bacteriologist, the monkeys were to be used in extensive studies related to polio.
In late 1947, Kough pushed again for Austin to have another zoo. He promised two, young buffaloes and a couple of deer from Montana along with a monkey coming to Austin with a military member.
That does not appear to have come to fruition.
In 1949, the state officially removed Horace Austin State Park from its list of Minnesota state parks and then gave it to the city. The 1950s, however, involved some legal battles related to the original gifting of land for a state park but in 1958, the state delivered the park’s deed to the city, opening it up for major development.
Until that time, the 1950s era of the old state park on the west side of Main Street was not good. While the city pool side looked nice on the east side, the other side was described as “a jungle mass of high grass and weeds, unpruned shrubs and a vacant monkey house.”
As of summer 1958, the monkey house still stood in Horace Austin State Park but it likely came down soon after with the 1959–1960 construction of the Red Cedar Inn hotel-motel, which today is part of the Cedars of Austin living facilities.
